Blitzen Trapper, 'Destroyer of the Void' (Sup Pop)

It takes guts to open a record with a six-minute song that splits the difference between the soft prog of ELO and the folk pop of America, but this Portland troupe make it work. For the rest of their fifth album, they hew to a similar early-'70s aura -- nodding to a time when spacey keyboard effects and alt-country dust carried serious cachet. Singer Eric Earley's fantastical yarns match the band's grandiose genre-muddling, from the Steely Dan jazz lilt of "Lover Leave Me Drowning" to the string-laden piano ballad "Heaven and Earth."